Efficient RU Collection Thread - FX: Commander (Classic HW2) mod for Homeworld 2

Copy-paste from old FX forum. Made by Dark.

Here Im posting a few issues that are important in planning your resource operations... They are easy to overlook small details yet they have great influence on efficiency of collection.

1. The sooner in game you max out your colls and prepare efficient RU collection the more RUs you will gather through match... It also allows you to gain great advantage over your enemy. Many players build defenses and combat units first and leave out collection for later... yet this is a short-run tactic. When they loose their units they will be left with nothing but a few small collection spots which must gather the RUs for rebuilding the fleet not to mention all the other costs. The best starting-off tactic is: "Prepare only defenses to survive... rest goes on building economy." Of course this doesnt always hold... if you know that early fighter raid can kill your enemy then go ahead. However most matches turn into a long battles... you better prepare for them soon enough.

2. Many FXers still dont use refineries and instead rely on Carriers. It seems irrelevant yet this mistake greatly slows down your resourcing. Carrier can only get in some minimal distance to RU asteroids. To that, docking spots are sometimes hard to reach. Refineries can be placed almost next to the collectors and their small size makes docking fast. Sometimes people dont use the refineries because they are expensive... but a refinery can make up for its costs quite fast so dont hesitate to use them.

3. Placing refineries between the asteroids causes collectors to stack. The optimum place for refinery is usually slightly above the RU patch.

4. Collection efficiency greatly depends also on our "collectors per refinery ratio"... If colls will be waiting in a queue for docking it will slow them down... while they are supposed to fly smoothly with no delays.
The best way to find efficient "collector/refinery" ratio is to test it out, however if you need a starting point then very efficient ratio is "max collectors limit / max refinery limit".

5. Assigning collectors to a patch always consider the "docking slots" of asteroids... Assigning too many collectors to a patch causes collectors to wait in queue for an empty spot on the RU asteroid... another way to waste valuable seconds.

As said those are just details and the delays in collection caused by overlooking them are just slight seconds... however if you add up the seconds you couldve wasted on every of those points... and to think every collector wastes time like that... Theres a huge difference between a so-so prepared collection and smooth collectors flying straight asteroid-refinery-asteroid over a short distance with no delays nor queues... Besides... all lost seconds span across whole match and in the end it turns out that they costed you a 1-3k RU... amount which does matter in a serious battle.